Seven months

Oscar has made leaps and bounds in mobility over the past week. Okay, he's not literally leaping and bounding -- at least not outside of his jumpy chair. But he is scooting around a little. It's not yet anything resembling crawling, but he can now turn over from back to front, reorient himself and push/pull himself a foot or two afield from where we set him down when he sets his mind to it.

It's all a matter of incentives. A week ago, we laid out the tiled playmat -- one of those textured puzzle-style numbers -- that we got him at the consignment shop in Groton and set him down on it on his back. Next thing we knew, he'd turned over and gone into whirling dervish mode -- tearing apart the puzzle-pieces frenetically, spinning himself around like a little breakdancer and practically willing himself across the floor to get to chunks of tiles he hadn't yet broken apart.


It was as though, developmentally, we were seeing him grow in fast-forward. The flipping over, the changing directions, the inching forwards and backwards -- these are all new behaviors. Until a couple weeks ago, we looked forward to "tummy time" with dread because he hated it. At best, you might have gotten a couple minutes of him on his stomach before he started fussing. Now, all of a sudden, you can't keep him on his back. He's even sleeping on his side like we do (though, at least in my case, more for space-conservation than out of preference).

Earlier in the week, Jen had him over at Sue and John's, where they have this wheeled walker chair for him. He was in the chair and eyeing a teething ring Jen was holding a couple feet away. She told him to come and get it, and lo and behold, he did. Only a few faltering steps, sure, but it seemed like a revolution in mind/body coordination -- once again, he saw something he wanted and found his way to it.

Very soon, it will be time to move him into a crib (not that we have any idea where we'll put one, but at least, given the size of our place, we shouldn't need a baby monitor). We're starting to worry about the need to baby-proof the apartment and put down carpet. He seems less a baby and more a little boy with each passing day.